The Chelsea Kid - Monte Manka

As I travel across the State
I had to see
The place where I was born
Out there on the prairie

The old house is still standin
Out there in a pile of dust
The windmill still upright
Now just a tower of rust.

That lone post in the front yard
Where once hung that dinner bell
To call Dad in from the field
To eat and rest a spell

Is slightly leaning
Warped by wind and heat
To hear that bell ring one more time
Would make my life complete.

That old front porch
With that bench swing
We'd sit there in the evening
And hear the locusts sing.

I remember fields of green grass
That yielded tons of prairie hay
To feed the livestock
On a cold winter day.

Then Mother Nature
With a twist of fate
Turned on a four year drought
Just when things were goin great.

A cyclone blew down the barn
Ripped shingles off the roof
Dust started blowing in
Doors and windows not dust proof.

Nothing but drifted soil
Now and then a tuft of grass
If only those happier times
Could last and last.

Dad had a part time job
Working for the State
We moved into town
Before it was too late.


windmill by judymarie
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We held Chelsea School outside the schoolhouse. The air in the Schoolhouse hung heavy with the dust. We would go to the pump and wet our handkerchiefs and hold them over our nose as we read out of our Bobs Merrill Primer. Every once in a while we would rinse out our handkerchief and dump the dust off the page we were working on and proceed with our lesson. Today the whole state would have shut down-Then you just kept going and going and going. I have no ill effects from the dust in my lungs, but my brain evidently absorbed a lot of the dust.

(Excerpt from Lost in the Front Yard by Monte L. Manka. There is more on the Our Echo website.)